American scientific literacy

On the latest episode, episode #292 of The Skeptics’ Guide the Universe —my favorite podcast by the way— one of their “Science or Fiction” items was that adult Americans with basic science literacy has increased from 10% to 28% over the last 20 years, and it was in fact true! Sure, 28% is pretty pathetic, but at least it’s going up.

Someone mentioned that it’s probably due to the internet, and I would have to agree. I think I got a pretty poor science education in high school. Mostly what I remember about science class in high school was trying to memorize equations. Even back then I though trying to memorize things that you could look up in seconds stupid, so I cheated a little. I had a scientific calculator that I would program the equations into and it would run them for me. Sure it may have been cheating, but it’s really just something you would do if you had to use those equations in real life. In fact at my current job I did a similar thing with calculations we constantly have to make —I make an Excel spreadsheet to calculate them.

I was so frustrated of high school science that my first year in college I took a chemistry and astronomy class and found them totally interesting. Too bad I found the rest of my college classes totally boring and dropped out after a year.

The internet makes it so easy for the people that are interested in science to continue learning. I believe that is where the 28% comes from. The rest of the population that isn’t interested in science just goes on living there lives scientific illiterate. While that in itself isn’t a horrible thing; it’s the people making money off them that I find disgusting. Late night TV and radio is chock-full of scammers trying to make money off of the scientific illiterate. They drive me crazy, but until Americans become more scientific literate, we will all have to put up with the Power Balance bracelets and the many other products of similar ilk.